The Limehouse Golem

I have always enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's books, but for some reason I had never read Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. I saw the film at the cinema and then read the book, and was hugely impressed by the way the adaptation converted a novel with such a complex structure into such a superb film.

When we screened it we attracted a number of Bill Nighy fans, but they were somewhat surprised to see him, for once, in a dramatic role.

The Limehouse Golem

UK 2016          109 minutes

Director:          Juan Carlos Medina

Starring:            Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke and Douglas Booth

“All the world’s a bloody stage in this gothic Victorian East End melodrama, splendidly adapted from a 1994 novel by Peter Ackroyd. A tale of theatrical murder drenched in the rich hues of classic-period Hammer, this gaslit treat sets Bill Nighy’s Scotland Yard detective on the trail of a grisly killer in 1880s London. Swinging between the ghoulish gaiety of the music hall and the grim stench of the morgue, the second feature from Insensibles/Painless director Juan Carlos Medina is a deliciously subversive affair, nimbly adapted by super-sharp screenwriter Jane Goldman and vivaciously played by an impressive ensemble cast.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Three nominations including Best Film and Best Actor (Bill Nighy)

There is a serial killer – known popularly as the Limehouse Golem – who leaves notes written in his victim’s blood on the loose in Victorian London. Scotland Yard appoints Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy) to investigate the case whose suspects include music hall star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), Karl Marx (Henry Goodman), writer George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) and playwright John Cree (Sam Reid). When John Cree is poisoned and his wife Lizzie (Olivia Crooke) is accused of his murder Kildare believes that identifying Cree as the Limehouse Golem will save Lizzie from the gallows.

Screenwriter Jane Goldman has reconfigured the story of Peter Ackroyd’s novel to make it a police procedural and has elevated the role of Kildare, mentioned only briefly in the novel, into the central character but as in so many of Ackroyd’s books, both novels and non-fiction, London is also a major character. Ackroyd anchors this story in the reality of London’s history with its reference to the Ratcliff Highway murders, two attacks on separate families in 1811 that resulted in seven deaths: Thomas de Quincey famously wrote about the murders and Ackroyd has his murderer leave a series of clues in the text of this work in the British Museum. Beyond the British Museum are the streets of London and the world of the music hall and the film contrasts the washed out streets teeming with opium addicts and prostitutes with the brilliant and colourful world of the music hall which provides Londoners with a temporary escape from the drudgery of their lives. But within the world of the music hall nothing is quite as it seems as Dan Leno made his name as a female impersonator, Lizzie Cree performs dressed as a man, and love and death are always in close proximity. 

There had been plans to film the book for many years and the diverse list of potential previous directors includes James Ivory, Terry Gilliam and Neil Jordan. Originally it had been planned that Alan Rickman should play Kildare, but his illness forced his withdrawal and replacement by Bill Nighy, who plays a rare dramatic role. The film is dedicated to Alan Rickman.

Juan Carlos Medina made his name with the Spanish horror film Painless/Insensibles (2012). Since The Limehouse Golem his work has included two episodes each of the TV series Origins and A Discovery of Witches

Here is a link to the trailer:

Finding Your Feet

I'd missed this film at the cinema, but it was pretty good fun and went down well with the members: presumably a significant number are fans of Strictly Come Dancing.

Finding Your Feet

UK 2017          111 minutes

Director:          Richard Loncraine

Starring:            Imelda Staunton, Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie, David Hayman, John Sessions and Joanna Lumley

“This film could not court the grey pound more aggressively if it handed out free Saga holidays with every ticket. And yet, cynical as it undoubtedly is, there is a certain creaky charm to this tale of late-life second chances and senior dance classes. That charm is largely deployed by a game veteran cast. Headed up by Imelda Staunton as Sandra, the wife who discovers her husband’s infidelity just as she was hoping to enjoy their Ocado-delivered retirement, and Celia Imrie as Bif, her pot-smoking bohemian sister, the cast also includes Timothy Spall and a gloriously vampy Joanna Lumley. Spall and Staunton, in particular, are tremendous.”

Wendy Ide

Awards and Nominations

• Won Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival

When Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton) discovers that her husband (John Sessions) is having an affair she takes refuge with her bohemian sister Bif (Celia Imrie). Bif persuades her to join her dance class and here Charlie (Timothy Spall), Jackie (Joanna Lumley) and Ted (David Hayman) show her that her divorce might just give her a whole new lease of life and love.

Richard Loncraine studied at Art College before moving on to Film School and in his subsequent career he has worked extensively both in television and cinema. For the BBC his early work included Blade on the Feather (1980) and Brimstone and Treacle (1982), both by Dennis Potter and later on he directed the TV movies The Gathering Storm (2002), about the life of Winston Churchill (Albert Finney) in the years before the outbreak of war in 1939 and The Special Relationship (2010), from a screenplay by Peter Morgan, about the relationship between Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and US Presidents Clinton and George W Bush.

For the cinema Loncraine’s films have been wide-ranging in style and include the period comedy-drama The Missionary (1982) which was written by and starred Michael Palin in his first post-Python film, Richard III (1995) a filmed adaptation of Richard Eyre’s National Theatre production set in the 1930s with Ian McKellen in the title role, and Wimbledon (2004), a romantic comedy set during the annual tennis tournament.

Here's a link to the trailer:  

Phantom Thread

The past twelve months have been busy and I have been involved in various other projects which have been time-consuming. The Film Club has continued and has gone from strength to strength, but I have been remiss in posting copies of the notes I produce on to this blog.

Over the next weeks I intend to get back to where we are now as we have just started our 2019-2020 season.

So to start with I am posting this almost a year late... Nonetheless the film was superb and I have subsequently bought the soundtrack which I listen to regularly.

Phantom Thread

USA 2017        130 minutes

Director:          Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring:            Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps

  

“Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film since Punch-Drunk Love is another cracked romance with a masochistic streak and a strong fairy-tale underpinning. Set in post-war London, amid the insular world of 50s haute couture, Phantom Thread is an oedipal gothic romance, a tale of lost mothers and broken spells, with secret messages (“never cursed”) sewn into its gorgeously cinematic cloth. A swooning score, crisp visuals and paper-cut-sharp performances combine to conjure a poisoned rose of a movie, inviting you to prick your finger on its thorns and succumb to its weird, dark magic.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Costume Design plus Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actress (Lesley Manville), Best Film, Best Director and Best Soundtrack
• Won BAFTA for Best Costume Design plus BAFTA nominations for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actress (Lesley Manville) and Best Soundtrack
• A further 46 wins and 85 nominations

In 1950s London designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the centre of the British fashion industry of the period. Woodcock designs dresses for royalty movie stars, heiresses and debutants, and has had relationships with a string of women who have passed in and out of his life, but when he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a young waitress who becomes both his muse and his lover, he discovers that she has the potential to disrupt his entire carefully managed life.

Phantom Thread is the first feature film that Anderson has directed that is set outside of his native USA and his screenplay is an original story, although the character of Woodcock is loosely based on the British designed Charles James. The style of the film reflects the work that Alfred Hitchcock and Powell and Pressburger made during the period in which it is set and composer Jonny Greenwood, who has scored all of Anderson’s films since There Will Be Blood, reinforces the period feel with his soundtrack that has echoes of David Lean’s British films of the 1940s, especially Richard Addinsell’s work for The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto that figures so memorably in Brief Encounter (1945).

Anderson started making films using a Betamax video camera at the age of 12. He spent two terms studying English at University before dropping out to begin his career as a production assistant on TV. He subsequently decided to make a short film as his “college”; the resulting short was successfully screened at the Sundance Film Festival and he later expanded it into Hard Eight (1996) his first full length feature. Anderson’s breakthrough film which won him both critical and commercial success was Boogie Nights (1997) set in the world of porn in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2007 he directed the critically acclaimed historical drama There Will Be Blood which among its many awards and nominations won Oscars for Daniel Day-Lewis in the leading role and Best Cinematography as well as being named as the best film of the current century by several critics.

Here's a link to the trailer:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

It's the beginning of our new season, we needed a crowd-pleaser to start with and pull in the members so I suggested this film. Fortunately it seemed to work as the film went down well and we actually secured a few new members. I'd seen the film at the cinema, and watching it again made me appreciate how well it was structured, although I don't think I'd rush out to buy the source novel.

Here are my notes:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

UK 2018          123 minutes

Director:          Mike Newell

Starring:            Lily James, Michel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton

“Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from [Lily] James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.”

Harry Windsor, The Hollywood Reporter

In 1946 author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) decides to visit the island of Guernsey after Dawsey Adams (Michel Huisman), a local man with whom she has been in correspondence, tells her about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which had been established during the Nazi occupation of the island. Juliet plans to write just about the Society but gradually she begins to be drawn into island life as she learns what happened there during the war.

The film is an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows: Shaffer had been fascinated by the Nazi occupation of Guernsey and had spent years researching the subject before beginning to write the novel but then became too ill to finish it. Annie Burrows is Shaffer’s niece and, as a successful author in her own right, was able to take over the novel and complete it ready for publication after which it became a global best-seller.

Kate Winslet had initially been cast in the role of Juliet but had to drop out when production of the film was delayed. Subsequently both Michelle Dockery and Rosamund Pike were approached to take on the leading role before Lily Jams was finally cast. Lily James made her name in Downton Abbey which also included Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton, all of whom already had impressive stage and screen credits to their name, as regular cast members. However since her role in Downton Abbey Lily James has significantly extended her own list of credits with a series of major roles: she played the lead in the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and after playing title role lead in Kenneth Branagh’s live action film of Cinderella (2015) she also appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Darkest Hour (2017) and, most recently, as young Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Mike Newell started his career in television where his early work includes Dance with a Stranger (1985) Enchanted April (1992) and Into the West (1992). He came to international prominence in the cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and since then his eclectic career has included literary adaptations such as An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) and Great Expectations (2012) as well as blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). His future projects include an untitled film about the death of Alexander Litvinenko as well as a new version of The Day of the Triffids.

UK 2018          123 minutes

Director:          Mike Newell

Starring:            Lily James, Michel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton

“Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from [Lily] James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.”

Harry Windsor, The Hollywood Reporter

In 1946 author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) decides to visit the island of Guernsey after Dawsey Adams (Michel Huisman), a local man with whom she has been in correspondence, tells her about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which had been established during the Nazi occupation of the island. Juliet plans to write just about the Society but gradually she begins to be drawn into island life as she learns what happened there during the war.

The film is an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows: Shaffer had been fascinated by the Nazi occupation of Guernsey and had spent years researching the subject before beginning to write the novel but then became too ill to finish it. Annie Burrows is Shaffer’s niece and, as a successful author in her own right, was able to take over the novel and complete it ready for publication after which it became a global best-seller.

Kate Winslet had initially been cast in the role of Juliet but had to drop out when production of the film was delayed. Subsequently both Michelle Dockery and Rosamund Pike were approached to take on the leading role before Lily Jams was finally cast. Lily James made her name in Downton Abbey which also included Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton, all of whom already had impressive stage and screen credits to their name, as regular cast members. However since her role in Downton Abbey Lily James has significantly extended her own list of credits with a series of major roles: she played the lead in the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and after playing title role lead in Kenneth Branagh’s live action film of Cinderella (2015) she also appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Darkest Hour (2017) and, most recently, as young Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Mike Newell started his career in television where his early work includes Dance with a Stranger (1985) Enchanted April (1992) and Into the West (1992). He came to international prominence in the cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and since then his eclectic career has included literary adaptations such as An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) and Great Expectations (2012) as well as blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). His future projects include an untitled film about the death of Alexander Litvinenko as well as a new version of The Day of the Triffids.

Here's a link to the trailer:

Call Me By Your Name

This was our final film: the result of a quick committee discussion after we discovered that it was impossible to find a sing-along version of Beauty and the Beast.

After the reviews of the film I'd read I was keen to see it and was not disappointed, although some members did not attend as they did not approve of the subject matter. I can quite understand why the film topped the  poll of the Guardian Best Films of 2017 in both the UK and USA, and James Ivory's awards for the screenplay are a tribute to grey power everywhere: it certainly did not come across as an old man's film.

Here are my notes:

Call Me by Your Name

USA 2017        132 minutes

Director:          Luca Guadagnino

Starring:            Arnie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) and Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Film and Best Original Song
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) and BAFTA nominations for Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Film and Best Director
• A further 80 wins and 189 nominations

“This priority is often overlooked, but pure sensual pleasure is an important part of cinema. So it’s a thrill to see a really outstanding film which provides it, as well as being itself about sensual pleasure – about the desire that precedes it, about an ecstatic submission to love, about the intelligent cultivation of all these things. It is a story of a passionate affair between an older and younger man and reaches out to anyone with a pulse.”

Peter Bradshaw

In the summer of 1983 in Italy Elio (Timothee Chalamet), the son of an ex-pat American academic, spends his time playing classical music, reading and flirting with his friend Marzia. When Oliver (Arnie Hammer) an American graduate student arrives in Italy to take up an internship he begins a relationship with Elio that soon goes beyond friendship.

This multi-award winning film is the end product of a fascinating combination of US and European film-making talent after initial attempts to make it ended in development hell. The film rights to Andre Aciman’s novel had been sold before publication but the producers then spent several years trying to find an appropriate screenwriter and director for the project. Eventually they approached Luca Guadagnino to direct the film but he declined due to pre-existing commitments although he agreed to act as location consultant as the film was to be shot on location in Northern Italy. Guadagnino subsequently suggested that he co-direct the film with James Ivory and Ivory then worked with him on a screenplay before standing down as co-director, a decision which he said resulted from the unwillingness of the financiers to have two directors. Thus Guadagnino directed the film and Ivory became the sole credited screenwriter, and at the age of 89 became the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Guadagnino saw the film as the final instalment of his thematic Desire trilogy following on from I Am Love (2009) (BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Language Film) and A Bigger Splash (2015). He described the film as an “homage to fathers”, referring both to his own father and the directors Jean Renoir, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Bernardo Bertolucci, all of whose films have inspired him.

At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival the film received a standing ovation followed by a ten minute ovation after its screening at the New York Film Festival. By March 2018 the film had grossed US$ 38.0 million against a production budget of US$3.5 million thus making it the third highest grossing release in 2017 for Sony Pictures Classics. The film also topped The Guardian’s lists of the best films of 2017 both in the UK and the USA.

 Here's the trailer:

 

Paddington 2

The choice of this film was a unanimous decision by the Committee bolstered by requests from several of our regulars.

We had screened the original Paddington film and that had gone down well.  i had enjoyed it very much but after the reviews for the new film I saw it at the cinema last year and really enjoyed seeing it again: on a second viewing you get a chance to pick up on the incidental detail that passes you by first time around.

It was a good evening - and also very well attended.

Here are my notes

Paddington 2

UK 2017          104 minutes

Director:          Paul King

Starring:            Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Hugh Grant

 

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for three BAFTAs – Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Grant), Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay
• A further three wins and five nominations

“This is the follow-up to the first Paddington movie of 2014 and it’s a tremendously sweet-natured, charming, unassuming and above all funny film with a story that just rattles along, powered by a nonstop succession of Grade-A gags conjured up by screenwriters Paul King (who also directs), Simon Farnaby and Jon Croker. Their screenplay perfectly catches the tone of the great master himself, Michael Bond, author of the original books, who sadly died in June this year at the age of 91, creative and productive to the end.”

 

Peter Bradshaw

Paddington is now happily settled in Windsor Gardens with the Brown family. While searching for a present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100^th birthday he finds a unique pop-up book in Mr Gruber’s antique shop, and undertakes a series of jobs to earn money to buy it. However when the book is stolen Paddington and the Brown family have to unmask the thief.

The global success of Paddington (2014) made it inevitable that a sequel would follow and the film reunites the same director and principal cast members, with the addition of newcomer Hugh Grant in a scene-stealing role as Phoenix Buchanan, an ageing actor now reduced to appearing in commercials for dog food. The main characters have come from the books that Michael Bond wrote, and thus the film qualifies for nominations as a “best adapted screenplay”  but, just as in the first film, the screenwriters have produced an original screenplay that nonetheless manages to retain the spirit of the published stories: Michael Bond was partly inspired to create Paddington by his memory of seeing child evacuees with labels around their necks and carrying suitcases as they left London at the beginning of the Second World War, both Paddington and his best friend Mr Gruber (Jim Broadbent) are immigrants and the area of London where the Browns live is, with the exception of Mr Curry (Peter Capaldi), most definitely multi-cultural. It is impossible in the current environment to escape entirely from the long shadow of politics, even in what is ostensibly a children’s film, and thus Sight & Sound was able to lead its rave review of the film with the memorable headline “Brexit, pursued by a bear”.

From an audience approval perspective the film has an approval rating of 100% on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and thus joins an elite and eclectic list which includes established classics such as Bride of Frankenstein (1931), Mary Poppins (1964) and Day for Night (1973). The film also appeared in 18^th place in The Guardian’s list of the best films of 2017.  As a result of the global success of the film the CEO of StudioCanal has confirmed that the studio is committed to making a third Paddington film, although no details have yet been released.
 

The film is dedicated to the memory of Michael Bond, who died at the age of 91 while the film was in production.

Here's the trailer:

 

 

My Cousin Rachel

The reviews for this film were excellent and I was looking forward to seeing it at the cinema, but unfortunately it disappeared from general release pretty quickly.

I finally saw it on DVD over the Christmas holidays and suggested we screen it, but the curse of the best films that you didn't see seems to have struck again: our screening clashed with the arrival of the Beast from the East and we had an audience of just seven - and three of us were committee members.


My Cousin Rachel

UK 2017          106 minutes

Director:          Roger Michell

Starring:            Rachel Weisz, Sam Clafin, Iain Glen and Holliday Grainger

Awards and Nominations

• Nomination for Best Actress (Rachel Weisz) at the Evening Standard British Film Awards
• One win and three further nominations

“My Cousin Rachel is a highly enjoyable mystery thriller of the sort that modern communication and the internet have made impossible to set in the present day. Based on the 1951 novel by Daphne du Maurier and adapted and directed by Roger Michell, it is a fantastically preposterous psychological drama featuring a lush score from Rael Jones and a tremendous lead performance from Rachel Weisz – who is mean, minxy and manipulative. Her sheer charisma persuades you to overlook one or two plot glitches. I can only describe this film as the roistering missing link between The Talented Mr Ripley and Far from the Madding Crowd.”

Peter Bradshaw

Philip (Sam Clafin) plots revenge against his late cousin’s mysterious wife Rachel (Rachel Weisz), as he feels that she is responsible for his death while he is recuperating in Italy after an illness. However when Rachel returns to the family estate in Cornwall Philip finds himself falling for her charms.

The film appeared at number fifty in The Guardian’s list of the Best Films of 2017 as well as featuring in its list of the Best Films of 2017 That You Didn’t See.  In this latter list Benjamin Lee was particularly impressed by Rachel Weisz’s performance:

“If this were a just world, and 2017 has proved that it most definitely is not, then Rachel Weisz’s name would be frequently heard throughout this year’s awards season. Her performance in Roger Michell’s curiously ignored My Cousin Rachel, the second adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel, is one of her best: a compelling, fiery take on a spell-bindingly unknowable literary femme fatale, disarming and enigmatic, charming and bewitching.”

Daphne du Maurier’s novel was published in 1951 although the story is set in a Hardy-esque nineteenth century. The novel was an international success and this led in 1952 to a film adaptation directed by Henry Koster and starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton, his first role in a US film. George Cukor had originally intended to direct the film but both he and du Maurier found the screenplay unfaithful to the novel, although on its release critics felt it was a worthy adaptation. Many of du Maurier’s other novels and short stories have also adapted well to the cinema: Hitchcock filmed Jamaica Inn (1939) and, far more successfully, Rebecca (1940) as well as the short story The Birds (1963), while Nicholas Roeg adapted another short story for his classic Don’t Look Now (1973).

Roger Michell began his career as a stage director working at the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His first work for TV was an adaptation Hanif Kureishi’s autobiographical novel The Buddha of Suburbia. His first film as director for cinema was Notting Hill (1999), and his cinema films since then have included The Mother (2003) written by Hanif Kureishi and starring Daniel Craig, Enduring Love (2004) and Venus (2006) once again from a script by Hanif Kureishi. In 2006 Michell was in negotiations in 2006 to direct Daniel Craig as James Bond in A Quantum of Solace, but the talks fell through.

Here's a link to the trailer: